Insights

When preparing Instagram posts, the caption may not be at the top of your list, but it should definitely be more than an afterthought. Your caption needs to be as compelling as the photo it is describing in order to attract followers and inspire action.

With over 700 million active users, Instagram is widely known as one of the most popular places to share photos and connect with other like-minded people across the globe. Even more promising is the potential it holds for brand marketing—as companies are adopting the use of Instagram at a rapid pace. An eMarket forecast, estimates that it will be used by 70% of brands this year.

Although robots are not poised to take control of the world as of yet, chatbots are now more than just a far-fetched idea from a science fiction movie. As a part of the larger Artificial Intelligence surge we have seen in recent years, chatbots are a shiny new tool ready to take your marketing strategy to new heights. Let’s look at what they are, what they offer, and how you can use them to improve your marketing success.

There is no social media site that can be overlooked, as each has its benefits and reveals a unique potential audience to your business. Twitter may be the last site we cover in our journeys across the world of top social media platforms, but it can be just as useful to marketers as the others. Alexa reports that it ranks 8th among social media sites in the U.S., and Twitter reports it has over 313 Million active monthly users. The word “tweet” is known worldwide, and its use as a short burst of content is perfectly suited to our attention-deficit world!

It may surprise you that Instagram, known primarily as a platform for photo sharing, has surpassed Twitter. Additionally, its success is snowballing, with the dramatic rise in business accounts and the added benefits of business tools like insights, post promotion, and other ways to promote your brand. Now is the time to create your Instagram account or convert it to a business account. With a user base of over 500 MILLION people, you have a plethora of great leads waiting to be discovered!

LinkedIn has already earned the reputation of being one of the most used social networking sites for business professionals, with over 467 million users reported in late 2016. They are poised to increase their popularity with marketers with the introduction of LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms. This new format is designed to improve the collection of quality leads, especially on mobile devices.

Today’s consumers are bombarded with a language that is constantly changing, and experienced consumers (especially Millennials) can smell a “newbie” from a mile away! Just like taking Spanish lessons before flying to Puerto Vallarta for vacation, it is an excellent idea to be armed with the lingo before marketing on social media.

It may seem surprising to many professionals who spend any time online that there are still those who (a) don’t have a LinkedIn profile, or (b) have one but really don’t know enough about LinkedIn to make effective use of it. As with every other social media platform, LinkedIn has its own community, language, and tools. If you have an account, you might as well use it, and if you don’t, let’s get you ready to set one up!

The heart of inbound marketing is the customer; how you build a relationship with that potential customer through useful content, attracting them to you instead of searching for them. There are many components to inbound marketing, and although it appears “new,” Artificial Intelligence (AI) is really just a more recent way to make that connection with your leads easier. Although there is some “prep work” to establishing artificial intelligence as part of your marketing strategy, the rewards are not difficult to observe.

Let’s just throw it out there. Instagram rocks…big time. Exploding since its inception in 2010, and it seems to be just warming up. With consumer obsession with photos and video, and bored by excessive text, you can share the love with few words. But let’s get serious for a minute…what makes Instagram such a great tool for marketers?

So, in Late Night with David Letterman fashion, here are the top ten reasons Instagram helps businesses become lean, mean, marketing machines: